Author: Handmade Business

How to Shoot the Same Piece for Different Uses

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springcollectionWhen we had to shoot film for slides of craftwork, framing was a big decision. You set up your art, turned on the lights, carefully framed the work and took your shot. The resulting slide was the final word on the craftwork. Then you made a few dozen copies of the slide, which were often off in contrast and color. Yet these were the slides you submitted to shows and hoped to get them back undamaged.

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Indoor vs. Outdoor Shows

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Ah, the great outdoors. Sunshine, fresh air, the birds singing. What could be better than this? If you’re an artist selling at a crafts fair, lots.
The great outdoors can also mean hot sun, destructive wind, pouring rain, and anything else the Weather Channel can serve up. If you are a vendor at an outdoor craft show, it pays to be prepared.
This isn’t to suggest outdoor shows are inherently worse than indoor ones. Far from it. If the weather cooperates, there are few things more enjoyable than vending at a lively sun-kissed event.
Be prepared
The biggest difference in preparing for indoor vs. outdoor events is obvious: the weather.
A roof over your head—a sunshade of some sort—is the most apparent necessity. Depending on the requirements of the event, your roof can be canvas, plastic or wood. This will provide protection from the sun and precipitation.
However, don’t forget to consider side panels as well. Side panels can cut wind, protect you from side-blowing rain, and keep low-angled sunlight from blasting you. (Or they can lift your booth off the ground and send it sailing, so stake your booth securely.)
If you have a choice—and you may not—try to angle your booth away from the west. As the sun begins to get low in the afternoon, it may smother you in heat and blind you with light to the point where customers avoid you.
Be aware that any weather-related woes you experience may add insult to injury by affecting how many people attend the event. If the heat is oppressive or the rain is daunting, then no one will come. (Hard to blame them, really.)
Foiling theft
It’s not just the weather you need to prepare for at an outdoor venue; you also need to think about theft.
With few exceptions, you are far more vulnerable to having your stock ripped off during the wee hours at an outdoor event than an indoor event. The more brazen thieves won’t even bother waiting until 2 a.m.—some of them may slip a hand (or whole body) into the back of your booth during the day while you’re occupied at the front.
If your booth has floor-to-ceiling side panels, make sure they are clipped together at the corners so someone can’t just lift the flap and slip into your booth. Since the back of your booth is the most likely place you will keep cash, spare stock, your wallet or purse, and other valuables, it behooves you to keep it as safe as possible.
Unless the event can guarantee an amazing degree of security during the night, you may wish to completely remove all stock at the end of the day and either lock it in your car or otherwise secure it. Once a year we do an enormous beer festival in downtown Portland, Oregon. Every night we are the last vendor to leave because we’re busy breaking down our stock and stowing our product in the back of the car for safe-keeping.
It’s a hassle, but it’s worth it: we’ve never lost one of our pieces to middle-of-the-night theft.
Learn the limitations
As a general rule, most outdoor events do not provide electricity. The exception is when the event supplies the booth, in which case they usually supply a single 60-watt overhead lightbulb. However, if you use your own booth and the function continues after dark, you’ll be…well, in the dark.
If your booth requires electricity to highlight your products (such as stained glass or jewelry), you’ll have to provide your own lamps and make arrangements ahead of time with the event coordinators to have electricity supplied.
Whatever décor or displays you use outdoors must be tough enough to handle breezy or even windy conditions, dust kicked up by the crowds, warm temperatures, rain, and other adversities.
Ah, the great outdoors. Sunshine, fresh air, the birds singing. What could be better than this? If you’re an artist selling at a crafts fair, lots.
The great outdoors can also mean hot sun, destructive wind, pouring rain, and anything else the Weather Channel can serve up. If you are a vendor at an outdoor craft show, it pays to be prepared.
This isn’t to suggest outdoor shows are inherently worse than indoor ones. Far from it. If the weather cooperates, there are few things more enjoyable than vending at a lively sun-kissed event.
Be prepared
The biggest difference in preparing for indoor vs. outdoor events is obvious: the weather.
A roof over your head—a sunshade of some sort—is the most apparent necessity. Depending on the requirements of the event, your roof can be canvas, plastic or wood. This will provide protection from the sun and precipitation.
However, don’t forget to consider side panels as well. Side panels can cut wind, protect you from side-blowing rain, and keep low-angled sunlight from blasting you. (Or they can lift your booth off the ground and send it sailing, so stake your booth securely.)
Make sure your shelving units or other displays are steady. What might work well on a linoleum floor indoors may not translate onto rough ground in windy weather. If you work on the old principle that if anything can go wrong, it will…then you can prepare appropriately.
Another consideration for doing outdoor shows is the need to match your product to the conditions.
For most people, this is not a big deal. After all, hand-knitted sweaters and scarves can handle hot sun as well as chilly temperatures.
But if your product can be damaged by moisture, you must either protect your stock from all possible forms of wetness (including fog, rain, humidity, condensation, etc.), or you’ll have to limit yourself to indoor events.
We did one event in which the temperature grew very hot—in the low 100s. Our beer steins sold briskly—people wanted something to drink from—but unfortunately for the vendor next to us, handmade candles weren’t surviving the warm weather.
We spent much of the weekend shuffling her candles in and out of our ice chest in an effort to keep her products from melting. Our efforts were not entirely successful because our fairly small ice chest couldn’t handle her entire stock, so a lot of her pieces became misshapen due to the heat.
It was not a financially successful show for her, since no one could see all of her products (they were all in our ice chest, after all).
The sturdiness factor
The more delicate your product, the more difficulty you’ll have doing outdoor shows (remember the candles).
Once we did a show at which the vendor next to us sold beautiful and fragile glass items. The weather was perfect…until the very end. When the show ended a microburst hit us out of the blue. It literally destroyed our booth, though we had packed away our stock so the tankards were safe. The woman next to us lost not only her booth, but most of her glass pieces as well.
Of course, outdoor shows occur during the most favorable time of year for good weather, but you always take your chances. Try to be prepared as much as possible—and hope for the best.
It should be noted that the show coordinators are not responsible for lost stock or sales due to weather, so don’t hassle them about it. We remember an event in which the weather got very foggy overnight. A vendor’s tent—a rental tent owned by the event—leaked moisture onto her product, ruining some of it. She tried to make the event promoters pay for lost sales and stock by constant pestering. She didn’t succeed.
The benefits of four walls and a roof
For obvious reasons, indoor shows have their advantages.
Weather is not a factor, unless it is so bad that it keeps customers from coming in the first place.
You don’t need a “booth” per se. As long as you designate your ten-by-ten space as yours by using appropriate shelving units, tables, or other displays, you can get by with less infrastructure.
Sometimes, though not always, electrical floor or wall sockets may be available. Again, however, don’t assume this. If your booth requires electricity, make those requirements clear on your vendor application.
Security is more easily achieved at an indoor event. After the event, the room is cleared out and locked. Voila. However, if your stock is extremely valuable and/or easily hidden and transportable (such as jewelry), it wouldn’t hurt to pack it away for the night. It goes without saying that all cash should be removed from the premise as well.
The bling factor
Indoor events are—or can be—more “glitzy.”
Would your products be better displayed with fancy lighting, elegant signage, or other eye-catching accents? You have a far better chance of dressing up your booth indoors than you do outdoors. Outdoors, one gust of wind would rip away most light decor. Indoors, you can expand.
In fact, it is best to dress up your indoor booth as much as possible (without irritating your fellow vendors, of course). Tasteful use of lighting and accents will bring you notice by passersby, after which your beautifully displayed products will draw them into your booth.
At the first large indoor show we did (a holiday gift show held in a convention center in a major city), we approached our booth display with pathetic naiveté. We were fairly new in business and had only done outdoor events. Our products are sturdy, earthy items that normally don’t lend themselves to glitz and glitter. And therein lay our mistake.
We had our product displayed on wooden shelving units, as we always did at outdoor events. That was it.
For three days we were lost in a sea of 450 other vendors, most of whom had the good sense to use every eye-catching tactic in the book to draw in customers.  The event was a financial disaster…as well as a lesson learned.
Eenie meenie minie moe
So what should you do—indoor or outdoor events?
Why, both of course. Both types of venues can reap financial awards and be a lot of fun. With some sensible preparations and an awareness of external conditions, your booth can be attractive, appealing, and a serious money-maker. TCR

outdooreventAh, the great outdoors. Sunshine, fresh air, the birds singing. What could be better than this? If you’re an artist selling at a crafts fair, lots. 

The great outdoors can also mean hot sun, destructive wind, pouring rain and anything else the Weather Channel can serve up. If you are a vendor at an outdoor craft show, it pays to be prepared.

This isn’t to suggest outdoor shows are inherently worse than indoor ones. Far from it. If the weather cooperates, there are few things more enjoyable than vending at a lively sun-kissed event.

Read More
What You Need to Know About Craft Business Insurance

What You Need to Know About Craft Business Insurance

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craftbusinessinsuranceAs craftspeople, we put a tremendous amount of effort into developing our manufacturing skills and business smarts.We’ve thought of it all: taxes, booth design and setup, merchant services accounts, product guarantees, wholesale distributors … the list goes on and on. Gosh we’re just brilliant, aren’t we?

But there’s one teensy weensy little detail craftspeople often forget: insurance.

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How to Create Your Own Brand Identity at a Craft Show

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Selling at shows or in galleries revolves around three things:
• Impeccably crafted, creative and innovative products designed to be “on trend” and developed to fill customers’ needs sell well. Products have to be the right look, scale, color, weight and an entire list of other criteria to make them desirable.
In this current business climate, functionality, be it real or implied, is a big factor in what people are buying. You are more likely to sell a customer something in this era if it has a use. If that use is only to make the customer feel good, it must be made obvious to them.
• You must be a good salesperson to make the most out of any sales venue. So many sales are blown in the greeting stage because artists don’t know how to sell their work. Sales are a language-based skill—when you learn to use effective language when selling, your sales volume will increase.
• The third element in the trinity of a sale is visual merchandising. Creating displays that cap­ture the customer’s attention, draw them into your space and sell your work is the objective! This third element is the focus here. How does one create compelling displays without spending a lot of money? When it comes to displays, it isn’t about how much money you spend, but rather about how creatively you showcase your work.
I always find it so interesting that as creative as artists are with regard to designing their work, when it comes to displaying it, they often take the easy-street approach. Many say, “I am just not good at display,” and give up. If you use shows to market your work, display is a part of your job. Currently, I am seeing a movement where artists are buying commercially available display systems that can be quick and easy, but the net result is that too many booths look exactly alike. This makes it hard for the customer to distinguish what is compelling about your product line, and makes it hard for you to build a recognizable brand.
When customers see you at a show, the visual of your booth should be the projection of a recognizable look—a brand identity. When customers see you at the next show, there should be a connection and memory of your display, your work and your image. I am not criticizing commercial displays or the use of them, this approach is right for some. However, the displays that I see grabbing the attention of customers are almost always custom-made.
Displays that employ conscious design decisions that work with the product line go a long way to create that special look—one that will resonate with customers. Effective custom-built displays not only create a mood and look that is unique to your line, but they also clearly distinguish you from your competition. Good design in your display will result in a sales tool that works for you, your customers and your product line better than any commercially available display.
By using careful and creative display solutions, you can save a lot of money compared to commercially available displays. Do not be afraid to use the same creativity in designing your booth as you use to create your work. If you are daunted by how you will build it, get someone to build it for you.
The first rule is that the display must work with the merchandise and vise versa. Plus, the display must speak to your ultimate customer who will buy the product. Sales will suffer if the demographic you are trying to sell to cannot relate to your colors or even the look of your booth. Keep in mind, your display should stimulate the senses.
The visual sense of your display needs to be one that will draw customers in to your space. Meaning, they will cross that imaginary line between the aisle and the front of your booth. The second sense that needs to be tweaked is the sense of touch. When your displays prompt your customers to touch something, you will see a spike in your sales.
An effective booth must get the customers to stop, take notice and be drawn into your space. When they do come in, something has to hold their attention and get them to touch the products. Your well-honed sales skills should take over at this point and, if you are effective, you will close a sale.
Too many booths send the message “look but do not touch.” Or sometimes things are displayed in such a way that the message is sent that you shouldn’t touch—key among these are shelves that are too deep, tables that are too wide and if the product line is out of easy reach. In most cases with commercial systems, you cannot determine the depth of a shelf (they mostly come as one size fits all).
Custom displays (ones designed by you) have so many advantages over commercially available systems. Realize that first of all, display isn’t “rocket science”—that is really all you need to know to empower yourself to be a display designer. If you go to a couple shows, stores or galleries and observe what creates visual magic, you will realize that you have what it takes to be a display designer. By analyzing your findings and asking a few questions, you will determine what works and what doesn’t. Then, reinterpret all your observations into a design that works for you, your product line and your customers—one that helps you build your brand.

booth-brand-identitySelling at shows or in galleries revolves around three things: 
• Impeccably crafted, creative and innovative products designed to be “on trend” and developed to fill customers’ needs sell well… 
• You must be a good salesperson to make the most out of any sales venue…
• Creating displays that capture the customer’s attention, draw them into your space and sell your work is the objective…

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